Saturday, April 21, 2007

31,750 medical personnel without jobs

Up to 10,000 young doctors who are unable to find jobs in the NHS could be offered voluntary work overseas.

According to official documents leaked yesterday, the plan was drawn up by NHS managers following the botched introduction of an online appointments system, which could leave thousands of junior doctors without training places this summer.

The document, Maximising Employment Opportunities, confirmed that there was a 10,000 "excess of applicants for training posts over places".

It said priority would be given to finding places for UK graduates and those from Europe.

Between 500 and 1,300 of those doctors about to finish their foundation training are believed to be most at risk of not securing a specialist training post under the programme.

Current estimates by the British Medical Association show that 34,250 doctors have applied for just 18,500 training posts in the UK.

Even though there will be 15,750 without a training posts only 10,000 will be offered jobs and those will be overseas. What will happen to the other 5750? I don’t see how we need to go abroad to seek doctors when we have 15,750 here without jobs. This is on top of the other 3,000 doctors who couldn’t find work 2 years ago which brings the total of doctors to 18,750. Only this is not all either. 13,000 nursing posts were axed too bringing it to the grand total of 31,750 medical personnel who don’t have jobs in this country. And they say we need immigrants…